i have spent many nights sitting in front of candles organized by color placed in certain directions, black for purity and red for love, lit up and slowly healing my faults.. 12, 13 years old, sitting in my backyard in the early hours of the morning when the full moon is still visible, getting in touch with the world by storybook means... holding friends dry, or oily, or hands and tracing them with a finger.

My first real zine was called Grate Apes, probably because Will Self's Great Apes was about the only novel I'd read by this point.

City Sacker got its name from apassage in On The Nature of The Universe by Lucretius (De Rerum Natura). I appreciate this may sound incredibly pretentious but it is nevertheless true. It's from a passage about superstition vs science. Originally this zine was poems and drawings back in 2001. I resurected the name last year because I couldn't think of anything else. At least there's no bloody poetry in it nowdays (and few drawings).

Optical Devices is my little RANT zine. I took the name from the song "Black hair and glasses brigade" by MJ Hibbett and the Validators for no reason other than I liked the sound of it.

My new *proper* zine which would be fnished soon if I could afford to print it doesn't have a name for definite yet. I've been thinking either Bite Your Lip or Specs Akimbo. Any of thoughts on this quandry will be greatly received :-)

My Zine is Cuddle Puddles and Hot Pants- because cuddle puddles and hot pants are 2 of my favorite things. Also, my zine is often pretty political, so I thought it was nice to balance out the seriousness with a bit of sillyness. Reflects my personality, both serious and silly.

First I thought I would name the protagonist of my novel Miranda, which has always been one of my favorite names. But I realized that I'm an essayist, not a novelist. Then I thought I'd name a daughter Miranda. But I had boys. So used the name for my zine.

Because the name doesn't reveal anything about the content of my zine, I added a subtitle, motherhood and other adventures

One of them doesn't even have a name. I call it "Russia zine" in my mind. But the cover is just a photocopy of a Canadian passport, so when it was put into a library it's name is "Canada Passport - Passeport" if you look it up. Which I thought was funny.

The Food Not Bombs cooking zines I edited/made is a flip zine called "Sugar and Snails" or "Slugs and Spice" depending on what side you look at. I really like those titles. They come from the nursery rhyme: "Sugar and spice and everything nice, that's what little girls are made of. Slugs and snails and puppy dog tails, that's why little boys are made of."